“Video is the next frontier for us, in monetization”, — Jonathan Raveh, CallApp

Mobile Beach Conference 2017, that was held on May 20-21 in Odessa, gathered the world’s leading mobile marketing companies. Among our speakers were representatives of Mobusi, Netmarable, Wargaming, Avazu, CallApp, Letgo etc. Check out Jonathan Raveh from CallApp chatting to Clickky about the trends in mobile marketing and mobile monetization.

Jonathan Raveh is the Director of Monetization at CallApp, a caller ID app. He has 10 years’ experience in the mobile industry in various content & advertising positions, with previous position as the Director of Partnerships & Community at Appnext, a mobile ad network. Jonathan operates his own Hebrew language mobile industry blog.

For those not yet familiar with CallApp, please tell a bit about your company.

CallApp is a caller ID app for Android, founded in 2011. We allow users to get as many details about their callers as possible, especially those who are not in there contact list – social media accounts, location (if it’s a business), etc. CallApp provides spam and block filters, as well as a search option. We are the largest caller ID service in US, Korea, South Africa and a few other countries. CallApp has over 3B impressions every month, and we work in most business models – CPM, CPC, CPI, and both manually and programmatically.

What do you think are the main trends in mobile marketing?

Mobile marketing has definitely matured a lot in 2016, and 2017 continues that path, with more focus on engagement and retention, rather than simple user acquisition. You can witness this trend easily by the number of re-engagement solutions that came to life in the past 12 months, some of them are evolutions of UA services. On the UA side, I’d say that programmatic is growing and will continue not only to grow but become a much better tool for mobile marketers, in terms of control.

What do you think is the main challenge for mobile marketing in 2017?

Retention, no doubt about it. Getting people to installs your app is hard enough, but the ever-declining user patience is challenging us to make the product accessible & easy to use in a way that it will benefit the users enough for them to keep it around and actually use it.

What are some of the best practices you discovered when monetizing CallApp?

Well, there are quite a few, but in my eyes 2 practices stand out. First one is diversity – for stability, it’s never good to be dependent on one demand source – it’s better to have more than 3 partners that drive revenue, than 1 that generates high revenue but takes you down when something goes wrong. We actually have more than 5 partners. Second is relationships – this part of the business carried a lot of weight in my previous positions, but they are even more important now. Good relationships create better communications, and that ultimately leads to better integration and results. It’s the best tool I have in my toolbox.

You are going to use video for CallApp monetization soon. Will you create your own platform or use a 3rd party solution?

Yes, video is definitely the next frontier for us, in monetization. CallApp is not really video friendly – users use CallApp in relation to phone calls, IM and SMS – they spend very short time using our service in each session. So finding the right spot to show them a video is not an easy task. But we believe that in the right conditions, this can generate good value for them, and possibly high value for us as well.

As for the platform we choose – we use Mopub mediation, and we intend to try video using their platform. As always, any decision to change our set up will be influenced by data and results.

You spoke at Mobile Beach Conference about ad mediation. How did the idea to override the Mopub integration appeare?

The idea came from working for an ad network, in previous years, that did this, one that I’m working with currently. I don’t actually see it as ‘overriding’ Mopub – having ad networks create an outside adapter to Mopub actually helps Mopub generate better value for their publishers, so why not? Adapters are a way for Mopub to avoid investing time and resources in integration, and they allow demand sources to work with premium in-app traffic. It’s a win-win situation for all.

What did you take with you from Odessa on May 20-21? Any tips for MBC2018 visitors?

Wow, Odesa… I took a lot of things. Beautiful and friendly city, and of course the great location. On the business side – quite a few interesting conversation that kept a lot of opportunities open for the future. There’s something different about MBC event from all the other conferences – it’s very casual and laid back, and yet people do business like crazy. It’s not easy to find the right balance, and MBC certainly nailed it there. I had a blast. So my advice for future visitors will be – put on your party hat, but don’t forget your business cards. Find the right time to talk about pleasure and the right time to discuss business, and you’ll find this event super beneficial!

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